Created in 1969 and with an introduction by Gen. Jimmy Doolittle who singlehandedly pioneered instrument flight "The Inspectors" shows the work of the Federal Aviation Administration in charting navigation and ILS in new and challenging era for aviation: the jet age. New navigational aids, some of them monitored electronically, are installed and checked out, and high altitude flight paths demarcated.

Much of the action in the film takes place at the FAA William J. Hughes Technical Center in Atlantic City. This is an aviation research and development, and test and evaluation facility and the national scientific test base for the Federal Aviation Administration. Technical Center programs include research and development, test and evaluation, and verification and validation in air traffic control, communications, navigation, airports, aircraft safety, and security.

The FAA was an outgrowth of the 1938 Civil Aeronautics Act that transferred the federal civil aviation responsibilities from the Commerce Department to a new independent agency, the Civil Aeronautics Authority. The legislation also expanded the government's role by giving them the authority and the power to regulate airline fares and to determine the routes that air carriers would serve.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt split the authority into two agencies in 1940, the Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) and the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). CAA was responsible for ATC, airman and aircraft certification, safety enforcement, and airway development. CAB was entrusted with safety regulation, accident investigation, and economic regulation of the airlines. The CAA was part of the Department of Commerce. The CAB was an independent federal agency.

On the eve of America's entry into World War II, CAA began to extend its ATC responsibilities to takeoff and landing operations at airports. This expanded role eventually became permanent after the war. The application of radar to ATC helped controllers in their drive to keep abreast of the postwar boom in commercial air transportation. In 1946, meanwhile, Congress gave CAA the added task of administering the federalaid airport program, the first peacetime program of financial assistance aimed exclusively at promoting development of the nation's civil airports.

The approaching era of jet travel, and a series of midair collisions (most notable was the 1956 Grand Canyon midair collision), prompted passage of the Federal Aviation Act of 1958. This legislation gave the CAA's functions to a new independent body, the Federal Aviation Agency. The act transferred air safety regulation from the CAB to the new FAA, and also gave the FAA sole responsibility for a common civilmilitary system of air navigation and air traffic control. The FAA's first administrator, Elwood R. Quesada, was a former Air Force general and adviser to President Eisenhower.

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